Sports entertainment is annually growing in interest around the world. The current state of sports entertainment is that of sports figures competing on a static playing field with an audience observing, typically an audience in a stadium or arena as well as in some situations a television audience. The sports participants compete in their respective sports (football, basketball, soccer, baseball, hockey, tennis, golf, cricket, track and field, automobile racing, and so forth) and a winner declared. Advertising is typically provided, and it is not an understatement to say that sports entertainment is enormously popular and highly lucrative.
Sports related entertainment offerings have increased over the years to satisfy the public's desire to view sports competition. Additional tennis tournaments, basketball leagues, football leagues, and so forth have been established, and more sporting events are now televised to wider audiences. Certain sports related programming has been created, such as the “Superstars” programs on ABC, that place professional or amateur athletes, celebrities, or persons simply having athletic abilities in competitive sports situations, at times combined with the attributes of reality television programming.
Coupled with the increased interest in sporting events and sports in general is the advent and rapid increase in social networking. Persons are becoming much more interested in interacting with friends and people with like interests online. Many people, particularly younger people, interact with numerous friends, business associates, relatives, and even strangers who share common interests. People interact with merchants using social media, and services have been established to facilitate interaction—Twitter, Facebook, etc.
While the sports world has used social media in several ways, it has not enabled persons attending a sporting event or viewing a sporting event to interact with the sporting event. The extent of social media or virtual interaction with a sporting event or participants in a sporting event has been persons submitting questions or statements that are read on the air or displayed on the air, with occasional questions answered by persons also observing the event—announcers, reporters, etc. There is no way for the observers to interact with their friends and interact with the players or the play of the game. In fact, certain sports leagues prohibit interaction between the fans and the sports participants during a game or match. This leaves a number of sports fans with limited options relative to the sporting event, essentially simply watching the event and interacting with friends, but not with the sporting event or sports personalities themselves.
Further, the sports world is relatively static in its construct. For example, every football field is the same dimension, every tennis court the same dimension, every NHL hockey rink the same dimension, and so forth. Every free throw line in every NBA arena is the same distance, 15 feet, from the basket. Every base in Major League Baseball is 90 feet from two other bases. The track at the Indianapolis 500 is a static 2.5 mile paved surface.
In view of the current state of sports entertainment, it would be beneficial to offer a design that employs the beneficial aspects of social networking and interactivity while at the same time enhancing the static conditions associated with sporting events and generally increasing fan interest in sports.